Other worlds are possible

I5

The Zapatistas offered a vision that other worlds were still possible. That a radical struggle against global capitalism could be engaged in that people could come together in a spirit of affinity and solidarity and actually not try and just dominate and control each other with a singular blueprint of the world or what the world could be. And I found that all very inspiring. And the fact that it was communicated through parables, through myth, through allegory, through poetry, through symbolic demonstration as much as through an armed uprising I found really powerful.

Values in action

I7

We're not as good at making our messages attractive….People like to talk about their values and people make their political decisions, whether it's voting or...what they're engaged in, what they choose to support, and they do that based on values. They don't do that based on solid analysis for the most part….we've come to a point in human history, I guess, in our civilization, where it's not about solidly analyzing everything unless it has to do with you personally, unless it's like your RRSPs, then you do it, but in terms of your politics people vote their values.

Violence and social change

I10

I think that there is a time and place for violence and it's different in different countries. I want to say that it isn't justified but, at the same time, if that is the only way that you will get your message across and that is the only way that you can change something and make the people in power listen [then you can’t dismiss it]... but it's definitely less accepted in our society then it is in other countries like in South America or even in Europe. But I think that it's a short lived activism. It's kind of like you light a fuse and then the fuse burns down, and down, and down and finally you have an explosion but after that explosion what is there? There's ash and bits of charred ground and I don't think that, in and of itself, can make lasting change. But there is a time and place for that explosion.

No going back

I27

I always think it's really exciting when people...move...and I think that the key thing…[is] not necessarily to take them and show them exactly what to do, but [to show them] there's no going back. They're either going to win or they're going to fucking lose and I think that's an important position. To push people out to taking those risks that they wouldn't normally want to take and getting them to feel like that's their decision, feeling empowered, and then creating that contrast, and then there's no going back, you're pretty much taking a leap.

Winning without utopia

I18

I really don't like utopian thinking because I really don't think if we were to beat back the forces of global capital that that would result in paradise on earth. I think there would still be a lot of challenge and struggle. But when I think about winning there would be a cap on how much any individual would be allowed to make, there would be a cap on how big any business [would be] allowed to be, there would be way more of a relationship between the [resource extraction and production processes] of any kind of industry….The people who live near that source, the people who extract that resource, the people who manufacture and do the labour producing that resource, and the whole shipping and distribution of that would be totally reformed to reflect sustainability and social justice, equality amongst workers.

Doing it ourselves

I26

We've already been compromised and co-opted…[b]ut out of that…I think movements will continue to grow. Underground movements, grassroots movements...there was a woman I spoke to a few weeks ago, she's from San Francisco, where a huge grassroots midwifery movement took place in the ‘70s and ‘80s and...she said, ‘what do you do when women just start catching each other's babies and no one has titles, and no one has credentials, and no one has equipment, but yet that's what women want, and babies are well, and women are well, what if we just caught each other's babies?’ What would that look like? What message would that give?

Radical fetishes

I5

I think systemic mass movements are absolutely a priority if we want to change the world. I think political party activism, in the way that it exists in places like the global North, but I'd say also in the global South in many places, is a red herring that should be avoided. But I'd also say that about supposed forms of radicalism like primitivism, like deep ecology to a certain degree, like the idea that there's certain forms of radicality that are fetishes in and of themselves. Insurrectionists would do well, I think, to look back to the history of anarchism's propaganda of the deed which was very brief, and short lived, and bloody, and totally ineffective. You want to create an insurrectionary movement? Build a base and defend communities and move from there but you're not going to create revolution by throwing a firebomb.

Fight to survive

I9

People talk a lot in certain activist circles of non-violence, civil disobedience, which is a disruption but what's to happen if and when the police and military are actually pushing people down, even killing people? At what point are people going to fight? If you just say, ‘well, never,’ then that doesn't look very good and I don't think it's even possible for people to just resign themselves to that, people won't. People will fight to survive.

No return

I22

I think the world is pregnant with dangers, to use an unfortunate metaphor, it's pregnant, it's full. War,...[w]e haven't even spoken about...the environmental crisis. People operate in sort of a linear epistemology and what we see with the environmental crisis, it's exponential. So in our lifetimes, ten, fifteen years down the road, it's not short, we could see even greater calamities because who knows how these complex systems interact? So there's all of these issues and so to solve all of these people need to realize that none of these can be solved by believing that...we can go back to the past and that these people [in power] can be pressured into going back into the past because history doesn't work that way.

Hope and fear for the future

I10

I draw a lot of my inspiration, especially when it comes to environmental activism, from the compassion that I have for the planet, from the emotional connection that I've built to the earth through many excursions, and wilderness trips, and exploring in nature, and the huge amount of appreciation I have for the world around me. So yeah, compassion, that is where I draw a lot of my inspiration from and also a little bit of fear and anger as well....Fear for the future. If nobody does anything then what is our future going to look like?